See Under by David Grossman (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

Neigel, half stewed with the pleasure of the call from Berlin, half frozen with hostility toward Wasserman, explodes with a rage-choked scream to remind him of “the humiliation I underwent for you in Borislav … health spas … lies …” and he is not prepared to listen to the writer’s explanation that “such sacrifices are unavoidable in the creative process, pray take no offense, sir … It transpires sometimes that a writer will suddenly become aware of a change of course that must occur, and so will wend his way back, or leap into the distance …” And Neigel slams the desk with his hand, proclaiming, “We will stop this game here and now.” Much to the surprise of both of us, however, he does not send Wasserman back to Keizler in the lower camp but demands to know why “you artists always have to complicate the simplest things, and ruin art!” He then preaches a long and exhausting sermon about the purpose of art, which is, if anyone cares to remember, “to entertain people, to make them feel good, and even to educatethem, yes, definitely!” But under no circumstances to “encourage doubt, to make people feel awkward or confused, and to accentuate the negative, the sick, and the perverse!” And after this speech—in which there is a certain obvious element of truth—he sinks down again, in a rage and in a sweat, confused and bitter, but still does not banish Wasserman, signaling him instead to go on with the story! And Wasserman, bewildered, wonders whether this is “the first time in his life that Esau has had use for such deep thoughts about the nature of art, et! I kept this to myself.” But he does not succeed in guessing why Neigel is so intent on hearing the rest.

He resumes in a hesitant voice. It seems he has relocated the story in the Zoological Gardens, or zoo, of Warsaw, where he spent such lovely hours with Sarah. Neigel, whose bitterness has sharpened his tongue, guesses scornfully that the writer’s purpose is to “take us with dreck Jude slyness into a little fable about human beings who turn into animals, eh, Wasserman?” Wasserman denies this, staunchly disagrees with the German that any story which takes place in a zoo must be childish, and introduces his cast of characters in their new location (Fried—veterinary doctor, Otto—zookeeper, Paula—in charge of zoo administration and domestic arrangements for both Otto and Fried). And the rest of the band? “Zoo employees all, of course! The regular workers, you see, were called up when the war began” (Neigel: “Hah!”), he says, and returns us to the doctor, busy taking the baby’s rapid pulse. He prolongs his description, in anticipation of Neigel’s inevitable question (“What does a veterinary doctor know about babies?”), so he can tell the German the marvelous story of Paula, Fried’s life companion, who in 1940 made up her mind to have a baby, yes, she filled the house with longing for a child and sweet resolve and popular notions, like the preferability of breast-feeding over bottle-feeding, and she even embroidered dainty didees with gaily capering figures; indeed, she became the artist of the only child, and made her body over into a battlefield against the tyranny and narrow-mindedness of nature, and with all her tremendous creative force, and despite the fact that certain doctors warned her against it and laughed at her behind her back, she never lost faith in her powers and the justness of her cause, and she lay with Fried at all hours of the night and day. Otto: “I mean we used to catch them at it in every place imaginable; on the elephant’s haystack, among the rotten cabbages in the storeroom, and by moonlight in the emptycrocodile pool, and even at my house, in my bed! They just got the love bite and couldn’t stop!” Fried: “She was the one.” Otto: “It was kind of annoying at first, I tell you, Friedy mine, while we’re on the subject, because who would have believed that my sister Paula had men on the brain? At the age of nearly seventy? But then, a few weeks later we understood, yes, she’d simply caught the infection from our other resident artists, the new members of our band, and though at first she was as much against them as you were, Fried, she caught the infection and wanted to try out her special talent, nu, and then it stopped being annoying, quite the contrary, wherever the two of you went to you-know-what, it was as if you’d sprinkled holy water and exorcised a ghost, and I knew our zoo was saved.” And Wasserman: “Yes indeed, Herr Neigel, it was fortunate for Paula and Fried that they were never caught in the act by your friends the guards in Warsaw, when they posted the strict laws forbidding the holding of Jewish rituals in public, which is precisely what Fried was doing!”

Neigel is silent. He stares at Wasserman and doesn’t respond. His lips are parted. Wasserman makes use of this interval to quote Otto pityingly. “Our poor Fried, he’s practically exhausted.” “Yes, yes,” admits Fried. “I was sixty-seven years old at the time, and Paula was two years older,” and so for the space of at least two years, day and night, most assiduously (“And with great feeling!”), the two made love. “You nearly broke my record, Pani Fried!” chuckles Mr. Yedidya Munin, exhaling the foul-smelling smoke of a cigarette prepared from the dried turds of zoo animals, his eyes twinkling slyly behind two pairs of glas—

But Neigel shakes himself. He stops Wasserman with a loud bark and a hand raised in negation. “Explanations,” he demands, “explanations, Wasserman, this instant!” And slyly Wasserman allows Munin himself to explain what he means by “my record.” “What is there to explain here, Mr. Neigel?” (explains Yedidya Munin). “In love as in prayer, in prayer as in love. In the